454 ttVESTION5 ceNCEENING JESUS. lyte other Christians to our particular scheme ; much less to im-. pose it on the consciences of others : We should ever take care lest by anxious enquiries into things less necessary, we should unhappily divert ourselves or others from those duties and prac- tical regards, which we all owe to the Father, Son and Spirit, and which all parties agree to be necessary to salvation." It is an important lesson both of natural and revealed reli- gion, that we should lay out our greatest concern and zeal on things of the greatest consequence : and we have already proved, that it is of much higher moment to wait for divine benefits front . the sacred three, and.to pay our proper respective honours to the sacred three, solar as scripture requires it, than to know how far. they are the same, . and how far they are distinguished. Indeed when we have arrived at any farther light in some cliyine doc-, trine, we ourselves may findgreater clearness of thought, with more ease, satisfaction and pleasure in the practice of especial. duties ; yet the most enlightened persons ought not to give un- necessary and unreasonable disturbance to all those who practise the same duties, though they do not attain so clear ideas as God: may have blessed and favoured them with. If we labour in our zeal to proselyte the learned to our scheme, the most part of them are so deeply rooted in their old . opinions, so immoveably established in their particular forms, so self satisfied in what they believe, so much prejudiced against any. further light, that we shall probably do nothing but awaken their learned anger, to fix the brand of heresy'upon us, and to over- whelm the hints of any brighter discovery with clamours and hard names, and drown them in noise and darkness. If we are Coo solicitous to persuade the .unlearned Christian tocome into any better explication of this doctrine than he has learned in his younger years, we have the saine huge prejudices to encounter here as in the learned world ; nor can we hope for much better success, if we attempt to change his ancient opinon by a hasty and industrious zeal. Hard names and reproaches areweapons ever at hand, and common both to the wise and the unwise, the Greek and Barbarian. The vulgar christian is as ex- pert at them as the scholar. Besides, if he be a person of weaker understanding whom, we address with our new explication, and we set ourselves hard at work to shake his old notions, but in the. mere modus of things, we may happen to unhinge him, as it were, and throw himof from his centre ; we may embarrass his mind with inward contests, which maybe too hard for him ; and we may tempt him to lay out too many of his thoughts and hours on some particular, expli- cations of this doctrine, ou the. substance of which he had long beforebuilt his pious practices and devotions, though mingledwith some innocent mistakes.
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